The Syndicate® Turns 16 Years Old!
In Feb 2012, The Syndicate turned 16 years old. It is a feat over 58,000,000 other guilds started down the path towards but imploded and ceased to
exist long before making it that far. While longevity itself is not an indicator of success, when we couple that with a look back at some of
the noteworthy achievements of years gone by, there is quite simply no other group even remotely as successful as The Syndicate within the
gaming space. An overview of some of the achievements made within the past 12 months include:

We hosted SyndCon 2011. We were in the middle of the worst recession since the great depression yet it was our largest and most successful event yet. With over 200 people in attendance, we were able to not only strengthen our relationships with each other, but also our developer friends as well.

As part of SyndCon each year, we raise money for charity. This year, the ladies from Youth Opportunity Unlimited (Y.O.U.) were able to attend and teach us all a good deal more about the primary charity that we support. It was great to be able to see what our sponsorship helps provide. Again, despite a recession underway we set a new record and raised $10,000 for charity. That is an awesome showing of community focus and our donations were able to do a great deal of good for YOU and the American Cancer Society (our other charity that we support after having lost several members to that deadly disease).

We renewed our Guinness World Record which we will continue to do each year. It is now set at more than 15 years. Each spring/summer I will apply to update it again and supply evidence we did continue to exist for the entire previous calendar year. Our record was also published in the actual printed book of records, Gaming edition.

We filed some very important papers as part of our Trademark. Every 5 years of a mark's existence you have to file to say you are still using it. That paperwork was filed and accepted for both of our marks. We also put an agreement in place with EA where we agreed their usage of The Syndicate for an upcoming video game is not confusingly similar to our usage as an online gaming community. They in turn agreed to support our mark and ensure we have exclusive rights to use it within all of their gaming worlds.

Our second book, Beyond The Legend published in the past year. It has sold several thousand copies!! Our first book, The Legend of the Syndicate was re-released in its second printing with a new cover. Both of them are available on lulu.com and you can pick up BtL off of Amazon.com. There was a really funny anomaly during SyndCon where copies of our first book were selling for over a million dollars each. Each day of the conference the price would rise hundreds of thousands of dollars for no apparent reason.

Over 250 members participated in testing SWTOR and a team of 50 created the Atlas guide for Prima. They created far more content than what is in the Atlas, which Prima has in their possession to do with as they please. The team did a SUPERB job!!

We did extensive consulting for 38 Studios this past year. The first part of the year saw us supporting Reckoning as it finished up its development and then we shifted gears to supporting Copernicus. It was a very exciting year and you were able to have a major impact on both titles.

Finally, I would like to point out our retention. I list this last but it is, in my opinion, the single most important indicator of success. Thousands of guilds rise and fall every day. Turn over within guilds of 15-30% per month is common. In The Syndicate, turnover is less than .3% annually. That means that almost every person that was a member a year ago is still a member. And it means that they intend to remain members for years to come. Because of that our members can safely invest themselves in building friendships with each other which in turn enriches the whole team's online experience and shapes us into the successful community that we are.

The Syndicate is a world class gaming organization. There is no challenge we have faced that we have not overcome. We have done many unique things and opened many doors to what is possible for a virtual community to achieve. While the first 16 years have held their share of obstacles, we have thrived in overcoming them and have grown into a rock solid, very large yet very unified, team of friends. Long Live The Syndicate!